Mustafa Unal, a recent alumnus from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has received the 2017 Ten Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) – Turkey Award from Junior Chamber International (JCI) in the category of medical innovation for research conducted at Case Western Reserve.
The award recognizes up to 10 individuals from 10 different categories between the ages of 18 and 40 who exemplify the best attributes of the world’s young people.
Each country’s Junior Chamber organizations select their own country’s honorees. JCI Turkey has selected Unal in the category of medical innovation for his doctoral research at Case Western Reserve under the supervision of Ozan Akkus, the Leonard Case Jr. Professor of Engineering in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Unal received his PhD in May 2017 and is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
In his doctoral research, Unal developed a new tool to assess hydration status of bone and cartilage using Raman spectroscopy with the hope for better clinical assessment of bone and cartilage quality.
Unal received the award on Nov. 27 during the award ceremony, which was held in Istanbul, Turkey. As one of this year’s JCI TOYP-Turkey award recipients, Unal will compete against other TOYP award recipients from all over the world to be one of the 10 outstanding young persons in the world (JCI TOYP-WORLD) next year.